Leave it to Donald Trump to make the announcement that he will comply with a court order as weird as possible. In this case, the president said Wednesday that he would abide by a Supreme Court ruling that prohibits him from deploying the National Guard to Chicago over the objections of state officials.

In what always seemed like a blatant violation of the Constitution, Trump has been using imaginary emergencies in cities and states controlled by Democrats to send troops there.

Instead of quelling minor and overwhelmingly non-violent protests — most of them in response administration’s aggressive deportation efforts — in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, the presence of troops led to more unrest there.

And while court after court ruled that Trump did not have the authority to deploy the National Guard based solely on flimsy pretenses, the president kept the boots on the ground until the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue last week.

As a result, he finally took to social media to concede defeat… for now.

“We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact,” he stated. “Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago were GONE if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in.”

All of that is complete nonsense.

First of all, right-wing propaganda outlets like Fox News tried to make the protests seem larger and more violent than they were. In the case of Portland, for example, Fox used misleading statements and old footage to pretend that the situation was out of control.

That caused Trump, an avid consumer of the right-wing media, and other administration officials to proclaim that Portland resembled a “war zone,” a ludicrous statement that was contradicted by residents of the city posting videos of them going about their business.

In reality, the protests that federal agents tried to keep escalating were limited to a very small area near a building that the government used as a staging ground for its raids.

Furthermore, while Trump did dispatch the National Guard to these cities, the troops had a very limited presence there as the legal fight over their deployment played out. Therefore, it is ridiculous to claim that these cities would be “gone” without them.

However, what is most troubling about the president’s statement is not that he lied, but rather his ominous warning that he would find another way to dispatch American soldiers to US cities.

“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time!” Trump stated, hinting that he will once again try to violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the US military from being used in a law enforcement capacity in most cases.

For now, the rule of law prevails, and Democratic officials in the three cities celebrated their victory.

“Trump is backing away because there was never a legal justification for deploying troops in L.A. and cities across the country,” said Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles. “The Constitution still applies to presidents who wish it didn’t.”